Individual texts, authors and their complete works, as well as editorial programs, are discussed, but book series are generally not the subject of literary criticism and rarely of literary studies. The long-running series "L'Infini" by the recently deceased Philippe Sollers, published by Gallimard, is closely linked to him and a particular idea of literature. Gallimard has now launched a new series, "scribes“ – supervised by Clément Ribes, who was previously an editor at the publishing house Christian Bourgois. Book series, like genres, are abstractions that influence the understanding of individual texts, shaping expectations and making statements about what is currently being published. Ribes calls the series a label, and yet his brief synopsis employs broad concepts of presence: laboratory, game, plurality, unknown territory.
Pourquoi créer aujourd'hui a new label littéraire?
Pour défendre :
A littérature qui cherche ses mots sans certitude de les trouver.
Des texts qui n'ont pas peur d'arpenter des territoires encore inconnus.
Des romans qui nous touchent par ce qu'ils racontent mais aussi par leur style.
Des propositions qui ouvrent de new chemins.
Des espaces de laboratoire.
The hybrid objects qui se jouent des genres.
The plurality of aesthetics.Dix livres par an: littératures française & étrangère, roman & non-fiction avec toujours le même souci: des voix fortes et originales..
Clément Ribes, Editor of scribes
Why is a new literary label being founded today?
To defend:
A literature that searches for its words without the certainty of finding them.
Texts that are not afraid to venture into uncharted territory.
Novels that touch us through what they tell, but also through their style.
Proposals that open up new avenues.
Rooms that serve as a laboratory.
Hybrid objects that play with genres.
The plurality of aesthetics.Ten books per year: French and foreign literature, novels and non-fiction, always with the same goal: strong and original voices.
The first program includes, among others, Mathias Howald, Cousu pour toiThe metaphor of patchwork evokes the large quilts made from fabric scraps, sewn in memory of those who died in the AIDS epidemic. The text, which blends narrative, autofiction, and diary entries, itself weaves a tapestry to recall the connection between death and love that emerged from this period.
Also by Natan Valmy, 22HThe book tells the story, in retrospect, of a fascinating man, Ago, who died in a tragic accident and had passionate relationships with three men. Monsieur V, an older man, had cared for him. Ten years after his death, Flint and Proust meet and together try to understand who this man was:22H It breaks the codes of the traditional novel and mixes time, space, and scenes at will. It is a text that explores the scenery and ceremonies of desire, love, and death. 1
C'est monstrueux, the après son retrait, en acquiesçant et – le corps délié – en larmes.
*
There's nothing wrong with it. Au début il y avait les images, les colors, les attentes et puis surtout le temps n'était pas passé. Maintenant Ago se méfie de l'histoire qu'il raconte. Il se la raconte toujours, comment faire autrement, au mieux il se fait sourire. Rest les odeurs, la crasse dans les yeux et le choc blanc qui un instant access to the suite. Lorsque le choc disparaît, sourd, Ago disparaît also. La suite donc. A sourire with fausses dents and de fausses lèvres. The new images in colors, la 1 la 2 la 3 la 4, ni bonnes ni mauvaises, qui bougent. Le mal est fait. The machine should be returned to images. This is a difficult task that prepares for long periods of time. Les chocs répétés empêchent les images de se fixer et tombent comme des tombes fragiles. Long time ago a cru être en advance. À ce point en retard.
Natan Valmy, 22H
"It's outrageous," he said after his withdrawal, nodding and – with his body relaxed – weeping.
*
It wasn't always like this. In the beginning, there were the images, the colors, the expectations, and above all, the time that hadn't passed. Now Ago distrusts the story he tells. He always tells it to himself, how could it be otherwise? At best, he makes himself smile. What remains are the smells, the grime in his eyes, and the white shock that, for a moment, makes him forget everything else. When the shock fades, dully, Ago disappears too. So, the continuation. A smile with false teeth and false lips. New color images, numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, neither good nor bad, that move. The damage is done. The image machine must be restarted. This is a task that must be planned far in advance. Repeated shocks prevent the images from settling and cause them to topple over like fragile graves. For a long time, Ago thought he was too early. So late.
Mathieu Lauverjat, Client mysteryThe unnamed narrator, delivering meals by bicycle, is hit by a car. The algorithms subsequently deny him access to the application he works for (a kind of delivery service). He is thus forced to evaluate the performance of company employees in this "Uberized" work environment, posing as a customer. A dehumanized world of digital consumerism forms the backdrop to such new stories.
My bike is pignon fixed, lui, available to you with a chance. The fracassé, the roue avant voilée, the cadran carbone en mode plié angle droit. There is also an ensuite aperçu mon sac de livraison isotherme éventré en chou-fleur derrière the diode électroluminescente qui clignait, affolée, the air d'un cyclope épileptique. Quant à elle, la quattro formaggi gsait devant, encore fumante, décomposée en lambeaux. This is the image of this pizza lacérée in vrac that is gravée in my souvenir, curieusement. Les traînées filandreuses de mozzarella sur le bitume jonché de tomatoes concassées, la base de pâte déformée, oblongue, les ricochets de gorgonzola en monticules épars innervés de tranchees bleues, les capres explosées form puzzle et les olives éparpillées en étoile. Je revois les serviettes de paper imbibées de pluie fine, les sauces dispersées, le liter de soda agonisant en spasmes et déversant sa mousse sucrée ver le caebene. A beautiful chaos, mets et woods entremêlés. If you have a photo device on your side, you will capture the composition and fix the nature dead. Au lieu de ça, je me suis senti coupable. This is the most important thing in the suite, with a couple who have their own dinner prepared in temps, with this foutue commande jamais livrée. J'ai imaginé leur soirée streaming, l'attente vautrée dans le canapé, la salivation impatiente de ces cadres supérieurs typiques des livraisons Dominicales – trente, trente-cinq, quarante minutes d'attente et toujours rien, bon, prise de decision, coup de fil irrité au restaurant Napolitain, incompréhension de Fabiola qui baisse à ce moment le store métallique de la trattoria, veuillez patienter un instant, ne quittez pas je me renseigne, et pour finir la stupéfaction face à mon intraçabilité soudaine. The car is immediately precise when it is volatile, disconnected from collision, disconnected from accident. There is no production plus the données. En informatique, j'avais disparu du logiciel de dispatch. J'avais failli à ma mission à deux cents mètres près. On allait me retenir the price of the course for degradation of the plat. C'était la règle. En outre, j'étais en tort. If you take the route, you will be responsible for the accident.
Mathieu Lauverjat, Client mystery.
My fixed-gear bike wasn't so lucky. It was smashed to bits, the front wheel bent, and the carbon rim bent at a right angle. Then I saw my cooler bag, ripped open like a cauliflower, behind the LED light, which was flashing frantically, looking like an epileptic cyclops. The Quattro Formaggi lay in front of it, still steaming and in pieces. It was the image of the shredded pizza that, strangely enough, seared itself into my memory: the stringy trails of mozzarella on the asphalt littered with crushed tomatoes, the distorted, elongated crust, the flakes of Gorgonzola in scattered mounds crisscrossed by blue trenches, the capers exploded like a jigsaw puzzle, and the olives scattered in a star shape. I remember the paper napkins soaked by the fine rain, the scattered sauces, the liter of soda gas dying in spasms, emptying its sweet foam into the gutter. A beautiful chaos, food and drinks mixed together. If I'd had a camera with me, I would have captured the composition, preserved the still life. Instead, I felt guilty. It's strange, but I immediately thought of the couple who wouldn't receive their prepaid dinner on time, of the damned order that never arrived. I pictured her streaming evening, the waiting on the sofa, the impatient drooling of those typical Sunday deliveries from executives—thirty, thirty-five, forty minutes of waiting and still nothing, fine, decision-making, an irritated call to the Neapolitan restaurant, Fabiola's incomprehension as she lowers the metal shutter of the trattoria, "Please wait a moment, hold on, I'll check," and finally, the astonishment at my sudden disappearance. Because at that moment, I had vanished into thin air, been removed by a collision and separated by an accident. I was no longer producing data. In IT, I had vanished from the dispatch software. I had missed my mission by a mere 200 meters. They would deduct the cost of the trip for damaging the meal. That was the rule. Besides, I was in the wrong. I had cut the road and was responsible for the accident.
Alexandre Valassidis, Au moins nous aurons vu la nuitIn a bored suburb, Dylan disappears under mysterious circumstances. The narrator follows in the tradition of the social novel noir when he examines this disappearance, the unspoken complicity of the two young men, their nightly observations of people in strangers' houses, and finally the intrusion, "between dream and reality, between narrative and poetic prose," as the publisher announces the book. "All this time, they were days like today. Days in the soft belly of summer. When the sky sinks. And covers itself with long purple and black streaks. With large, sad flowers." 2
Ils l'auraient poussé dans le coffre d'une voiture, Dylan. A blue night utility. Aux plaques probablyment maquillées. Les 0 et les O, surtout. Auxquels ils auraient ajouté une ligne horizontale, au milieu. Qui transformerait les us en B, et les autres en 8. C'était une habitude, chez eux. So, I'll give you an idea of what you chose, according to your subject. Qu'ils maquillaient les plaques des véhicules volés. Sur les parkings des grands magasins, la night. Ou le dimanche, lorsqu'ils étaient à peu near deserts. Mais jamais en journée. Equip the plus souvent d'un simple tournevis. Ou sur les aires d'autoroute. Là où ils rôdaient, pour ainsi dire. À deux ou trois, maximum. Dans a camion blanc.
Et après, on n'a plus revu Dylan. C'était comme s'il avait été effacé. Come on, a coup de baguette magic. Come and have access to all the ends that are very frequent. Au moins ceux où l'on se retrouvait tous les deux. Because when you don't travel, you don't have to save money so you can get there. S'il était heureux. No, no one has the ability to be a trainer.
If you have access to your aunt, you don't need to know the address. Mais sans que l'on m'ait jamais invité à franchir la porte de chez elle. Pour l'une ou l'autre raison. Et quelques other lies. You can also have access to all the end products or you will find out, lui et moi. It is also available on the name of all the files. This is a woman plus accès rien. Parce que des gens très haut placés auraient décidé que pour lui c'était stop. Terminus. Plus de discussion possible.
Alexandre Valassidis, Au moins nous aurons vu la nuit.
They would have shoved him into the trunk of a car, Dylan. A dark blue van. With probably counterfeit license plates. Especially the 0 and the O. They would have added a horizontal line down the middle. That would make some Bs and others 8s. That was their usual practice. That's what I learned about them before anything else. That they forged the license plates of stolen vehicles. At night in department store parking lots. Or on Sundays, when they were almost deserted. But never during the day. Usually equipped with a simple screwdriver. Or at highway rest stops. Where they roamed, so to speak. At most, two or three of them. In a white truck.
And then we never saw Dylan again. It was as if he'd been erased. Just like that, like a magic wand. As if he'd been wiped off all the places he'd been. At least the places where we used to meet. Because when we weren't together, I practically never knew what had become of him. Whether he was happy. Or where he was hanging out, or who he was with.
There was his aunt, whose address I knew. But I was never invited through her door. For one reason or another. And a few other places. But I can say that he had been removed from every place where he and I used to meet. It was as if his name had been erased from a whole list of entries. That he no longer had access to anything. Because high-ranking people had decided that was the end of it for him. That was it. No further discussion possible.
The series is explicitly open to foreign-language literature as well, for example by Vincenzo Latronico, Les perfectionsThe Italian book (Le perfezioni, dt. The Perfections) The novel follows an Italian couple as they move to Berlin, observing the gentrified city as well as the facades of social media. The publisher sees in this the cruel gaze of an entomologist, as if in homage to Perec's Les Choses (which gives the book its motto) observes the apparent perfections of this time in their dissolution.
All part of the opposite side of the infiltrate is a camera from the letto. A matrimonial matrimonial ad old town is appoggiato su a riquadro di tatami. The testiera è nascosta da quattro cuscini gonfi and il piumone è coperto da un quilt antico, unica chiazza cromatica fra ilino grezzo delle federe and dei copripiumoni, il bianco delle pareti, il giallo pallido dei tatami. There are so many lights, there are metallic cylinders in the ball and a filament lamp; Due to servimuti simmetrici attorno a baule da viaggio; A yoga materassino arrotolato in a angolo, accanto all dumbbell and alla fascia da estensione. The picture has a light and is illuminated, it is one of the most beautiful buildings, with the tendency to sound, the pareti striate the chiazze of light arancione che filtrano when it is sveglia tardi, the sole is già alto, and forse è Domenica, or forse no.
The life promessa da queste immagini è tersa e concentrated, facile.
In this life, in the first place and in the estate, you have the coffee on the balcony, benefitting from the sole of the est, scoring the title of the New York Times and the aggiornamenti of the social sullo schermo di tablet. If you start the piano, come part of a routine that teaches yoga and a great colazione arricchita da vari tipi di semi. If you use the laptop, you will have a picture of the same image: an intensive focus on the writing in intervals, a video game with a friend who propels a project, a fraudulent attack on the social, a salt on the biological market of the house. The summer is so long - the ore lavorate, alla fine, sono probabilmente più di quelle di un impiegato. However, despite the fact that the end of the day is not in contact, in the life of the lavoro you will have an important wheel without being oppressed or ricatto. Contrary to this: the lavoro is a font of crescita and stimolo creative, the ritmo di fondo per the melodia del piacere.
Vincenzo Latronico, Le perfezioni.
At the other end of the row is a bedroom. A mattress twice as thick rests on a tatami frame. The headboard is concealed by four fluffy pillows, and the duvet is covered by an antique quilt, the only splash of color amidst the rough linen of the pillowcases and sheets, the white of the walls, and the pale yellow of the tatami. There are two points of light, thin metal cylinders from which a bulb sprouts; two symmetrical valet stands around a suitcase; a yoga mat is rolled up in a corner, next to the dumbbells and the resistance band. The pictures are all sharp and well-lit, but one shows this room in darkness, with the curtains drawn, the walls pierced by the orange patches of light that penetrate when you wake up late and the sun has already risen, and perhaps it is Sunday, perhaps not.
The life these images promise is short, concentrated, and simple.
In this life, you drink coffee on the balcony in spring and summer, basking in the eastern sun while scrolling through New York Times headlines and social media updates on a tablet screen. You water plants as part of a routine that includes yoga and a breakfast enriched with various seeds. Of course, you work on your laptop, but at the pace of a painter rather than an office worker: a burst of intense concentration at your desk is punctuated by a walk, a video call with a friend proposing a project, an exchange of jokes on social media, or a trip to the organic market behind your house. The days are long—your working hours likely exceed those of an office worker. But unlike the latter, the hours aren't counted, because work plays an important role in this life without being oppressive or coercive. On the contrary, work is a source of growth and creative stimulation, the background rhythm to the melody of pleasure.
Claire-Louise Bennett, Caisse 19The book translated from English (Checkout 19) chooses the checkout of a supermarket as the starting point for the young student, who later looks back on her life as a reader and writer, in a modernist style which she also addresses incidentally:
At the end of term the English department sought to recoup all the books that had been gamely issued to each pupil at the start of term. Books hardly any of the pupils had bothered to look at in the meantime, yet now, at the end of term, they felt no compulsion whatsoever to bring them back. This must have been infuriating for the department. The pupils simply had no interest. Not in reading books, nor returning them. Their principal interest, right up until the very last bell, was to disrupt the flow of information and ideas, which the teachers attempted each lesson to set in motion, with all kinds of never-ending pranks. Though, actually, their repertoire, despite being perseverant, was not especially varied. Every term in fact the pupils became fixated on a particular stunt and took great delight in pulling it off in just the same way day after day for most of the term's duration. It was quite perverse. Like performers in the avant-garde tradition they were alert to the ways sustained repetition produces subtle and absurd variations that are as transfixing as they are subversive. Such recursive hijinks were most often deployed in the science labs, where the pupils' incendiary hands might easily alight upon and combine a spectrum of appliances and substances that could be counted on to interact with each other in a palpable and fairly predictable fashion — although the exact scale of the ensuing reaction could not be quite so reliably gauged.
Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19.
At the end of the school year, the English department tried to collect all the books that had been issued to each student at the beginning of the year. Hardly any of the students had bothered to look at the books in the meantime, yet now, at the end of the school year, they felt no obligation to return them. This must have been very annoying for the department. The students simply had no interest. Neither in reading the books nor in returning them. Their main interest, right up until the final bell, was to disrupt the flow of information and ideas that the teachers tried to initiate in every lesson with all sorts of endless pranks. However, although persistent, their repertoire wasn't particularly varied. Each school year, the students were fixated on a particular prank and took great pleasure in carrying it out in the same way day after day. This was quite perverse. Like the artists of the avant-garde tradition, they were aware that constant repetition produces subtle and absurd variations that are as captivating as they are subversive. Such recursive pranks were most often played in science laboratories, where the inquisitive hands of pupils could easily handle and combine a range of devices and substances that interacted in a noticeable and fairly predictable way – even if the exact extent of the resulting reaction was not quite so reliable to estimate.
Whether the book series develops a literary program (or can even develop one today) is a question that can only truly be judged over time. However, the first texts of "Scribes" form a group of fictional works that attempt to give contemporary realities their own unique form.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "22H Fait exploser les codes du roman traditionnel et mélange à loisir les temporalités, les espaces, les scènes. Procédant par échos, par variations, par jeux de voix, this is a text that explores les scénographies et les ceremonies du désir, de l'amour, de la mort.” Publisher announcement.>>>
- "Toute this époque, c'étaient des jours comme aujourd'hui. Des jours du ventre mou de l'été. Où le ciel s'affaisse. En se couvrant de longues traînées mauve et noir. De grandes fleurs tristes.">>>
